


night blindness

by persepoline



Category: Natsume Yuujinchou | Natsume's Book of Friends
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Families of Choice, Family Fluff, Gen, Healing from trauma, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Natsume Takashi Protection Squad, Past Abuse, Yokai AU, technically an AU but i tried to keep it as canon compliant as possible
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-19
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:07:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 15,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25984867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persepoline/pseuds/persepoline
Summary: The space between was real, tangible. There was a pocket in the world, a veil of liminality that one could reach into and withdraw as something new, something old, something other. Natsume closed his eyes and reached into that space now, into the place where he tucked his true form away, out of sight.“I could make a fight or flight response joke.” Madara’s voice was far away now. “But I’m fairly sure you’ve made it for me.”
Comments: 42
Kudos: 144
Collections: Natsume Yuujinchou Bang Summer 2k20





	1. Chapter 1

“Okay, how about this one: what question is it impossible to answer ‘ _No_ _’_ to?”

Natsume Takashi was looking out the window again.

The weather had taken a turn for the worse and stalks of rice rippled where they stood rooted in the paddies beyond the schoolyard patio, buffeted by the wind. A stray crumb of sun peaked out from behind a dense wall of cloud, washing the fields and the roadways in affable shades of yellow and apricot.

“Easy!” Nishimura grinned and hopped lightly to the floor, vacating his desk in favor of Natsume’s. “ _‘Will you go out with me?’_ That’s the question. But only when it’s coming from _me_ , naturally.” He raised an arm to gesture theatrically at nothing in particular and pitched his voice up by several octaves to mimic his hypothetical date. “ _‘Of course, Satoru! How could I ever refuse such a handsome guy?’_ ”

Kitamoto, who was busy dusting off the nearby chalkboard, barked a sharp laugh. “Could you be more of a narcissist?”

Nishimura swung his legs happily. “Nope.”

On the other side of the windowpane, the oncoming gale whipped the autumn landscape into a dizzying smear of reds and golden-browns. Natsume’s eyes followed a sparrow as it fought against the rising wind, straining its wings as it struggled back to the safety of the ginkgo tree in the courtyard.

Class President Sasada, who had posed the question in the first place, closed her book with a snap: _365 Riddles & Crosswords for the Precocious Mind _, the title boasted in a bold font. Sasada stood to retrieve her umbrella from the coat rack at the back of the classroom.

“We had better call it a day,” she said, pulling on her waxy-skinned raincoat. “It looks as though it’s getting bad out there.”

From his perch atop Natsume’s desk, Nishimura raised an eyebrow. “What about the chores?”

“We can finish cleaning the classroom tomorrow morning. I’m sure the teachers will understand.” Sasada was pulling a pair of rubberized galoshes on over her normal outdoor shoes, and Kitamoto followed suit. “I don’t want anyone getting stuck in the rain and catching a cold because they couldn’t make it home in time.”

In the asphalt-lined quad, the sparrow had almost reached its destination. Natsume watched it flit beneath the canopy of the ginkgo tree and grasp for purchase on one of the inner branches.

“I wonder if it’s scary.” Taki had approached him from behind and laid a friendly hand atop his head; the gesture still made him flinch sometimes.

“If what’s scary?” Natsume craned his head up, but all he could see was her telltale sweep of ginger hair.

Taki hummed thoughtfully. “Flying in the rain. I wonder if it’s scary for birds.”

“Oh.” He turned back to the window. “It is, if the rain’s coming down hard enough.”

Nishimura poked him in the shoulder. “Oy, you answered awfully quick. Chat with birds on the regular, do you?”

For a moment, Natsume was at a loss for words.

“Can you blame him?” Kitamoto elbowed his friend off the desk. “Birds are probably better at conversation than you.”

“Not to mention,” Natsume added, “they don’t sit on my desk uninvited.” He felt the ghost of a smile creeping onto his face.

There came a soft knock from the open doorframe of the classroom entryway. Tanuma Kaname was waiting there, umbrella slung over one arm and raincoat slung over the other.

“ _Are you still awake?”_ he asked from the threshold.

Natsume blinked before realizing that Tanuma was looking past him.

“That’s the answer, isn’t it? To your riddle. That’s the question it’s impossible to answer with ‘ _No_ ’.”

The class president beamed. “Thank god _someone_ here uses their brain.”

The sound of the rain drumming on the roof overhead was deafening.

**. . .**

“Y’know,” Tanuma mused, tapping his pencil rhythmically against the side of his own face, “not to be disrespectful, but this kinda sucks.”

Outside, the roar of the rain had dwindled into a light, steady drizzle, and Touko had thrown every window in the house open in order to “properly air the place out before it gets too cold.” It wasn’t a particularly warm autumn, and the wet season shouldn’t have lasted into mid-fall like this.

“The fellow who manages the farm next door said he thinks we must have angered some spirit or god,” Touko had said amicably as she’d unpacked her groceries in the kitchen.

“What, that old geezer Tsukishima?” Nijimura waved a hand. “My mom’s good friends with his sister. He’s always saying crazy stuff like that.”

Wordlessly, Natsume opened the fridge and began to help put things away: milk bottles, an egg carton, furikake, pickled radishes, pots of jam. He liked the tempo of the task, methodical and straightforward. He liked finding empty spaces to slide objects into, perfect fit, not-quite-perfect fit. He did the jigsaw puzzle and listened to his friends chat with Touko about the people they’d grown up with and the land they’d done the growing-up on and tried not to be jealous.

“Oh, I guess you don’t know,” Kitamoto addressed him casually when he resurfaced, closing the fridge door. “Since you haven’t been around this area for very long - but the monsoons don’t usually last this far into the year.”

“Mhm, that’s right.” Touko was putting the kettle on. She didn’t sound worried.

Now they sat in Natsume’s room upstairs, crouching over their homework. A plate of diced pineapple sat on the edge of the low table they’d gathered around, and a cool, damp breeze wafted in through the open window. In the corner of the room, an orange-and-gray tabby cat was curled up atop a pile of folded laundry, fast asleep.

“Tanuma’s right, this blows.” Nishimura leaned back to stretch. “I can’t believe we have to write poems. I mean, _poems_. Didn’t people stop doing that after, like, the Heian Era?”

Kitamoto chuckled. “Dude, people still write poems. They didn’t become obsolete or anything.” He reached for a chunk of pineapple with his fork. “Besides, I hear girls like them.”

Taki and Sasada had departed directly for their own homes in light of the breaking rainstorm, and as such, there were currently no girls around to confirm or deny this rumor.

“Okay, how does this sound?” Nishimura straightened and held his notebook paper aloft. “ _Oh, my love, your lungs breathe the music of springtime~_ ”

Natsume laughed, leaning in to look over Nishimura’s shoulder at the blank page. “Is this improvised?"

“Hush, you’re interrupting my flow-- _The sound of your heartbeat paints the sunset, the apple blossoms refuse to fall this year because they’re jealous of the rosy hue in your cheeks~_ ”

Nishimura doubled over, clutching his midriff in a manic fit of laughter.

“Thank you for that performance,” wheezed Natsume. “It was exceptional.”

“I think you should recite that to Harada-san from Class B,” Kitamoto said, wiping a tear from his eye. “Tell her that her heartbeat paints the sunset.”

“I don’t think all poetry _has_ to be like that,” said Tanuma thoughtfully, once they’d recovered. “It can be nice, sometimes. Probably.” He scratched his head. “But man, this is harder than I thought it would be. I can’t think of anything.”

Kitamoto yawned. “Natsume, you’ve got something written down. Show us how it’s done.”

Natsume felt himself freeze up. His limbs were stiff and heavy.

“It’s not very- I mean, um. It’s really short, it’s just-”

He could do nothing but watch as his notebook was tugged across the table. Scarcely a minute had passed before the others finished reading and drew back, blinking at the characters carefully penciled onto the page.

**飛行天気 / “FLYING WEATHER”**

_There’s a bird on the ground._

_There was a stone in my hand._

  
  


Nishimura laughed, but his laugh was soft. Natsume strained his ears trying to detect some note of nervousness, but he could find none. “Hey,” he said, “this is kinda dark.”

Natsume wanted to crawl under the table. He missed the kotatsu that Shigeru used during the winter months; if he wanted to, he could just roll under its checkered gingham skirt and stay there for a while.

He made do with a shrug. “Sorry.”

“No, this is good.” Tanuma slid the notebook back in his direction. “I mean, I think so?” He smiled sheepishly. “It’s hard to tell, with poetry. But I liked it.”

Kitamoto dabbed at his face with a napkin. “I certainly prefer this over Nishimura’s poem,” he said around a mouthful of pineapple.

“Hey! That was a very heartfelt declaration, I’ll have you know.”

“Oh, I could tell. _Heartfelt_ as in, my heart felt something and that something was embarrassment for you.”

Nishimura heaved a long-suffering sigh and leaned back on the heels of his palms. “Yeah, laugh it up. Maybe my poem will score me a date. You never know.” He swiped his friend’s fork and reached for the plate of fruit, then cast his eyes about in bewilderment when he found the plate empty.

“Oy, Natsume! Your weird cat made off with the last of our pineapple!”

All eyes turned towards the corner. Sure enough, the cat was nestled in the same spot as before, but now it was conspicuously licking pineapple juice from its whiskers, eyeing the buoys all the while with its smug, eerie gaze.

“Have you taken Nyanko-sensei to a vet recently?”

“No. Why?”

“Well, I dunno.” Kitamoto tucked a pen behind his ear. “Don’t you think there might be something wrong with him? Cats aren’t supposed to eat pineapple, are they?”

Natsume’s eyes flitted across the table to meet Tanuma’s. They exchanged a look.

“I don’t think I could take him to the vet even if I wanted to,” said Natsume with a smile. “He wouldn’t like it one bit.”

**. . .**

“You could at least _try_ to act like a real cat. Put in some effort for a change.”

After Natsume’s classmates departed, he stood, stretched, began to clear away his textbooks and stationery. When his eyes fell on the empty plate, he stopped his tidying to frown indiscriminately at his surroundings: how long had he lived here now? Nearly a year, and this was all he had to show for it. Bare walls. Empty bookcase. Bedside table barren, save for a lamp and errant phone charger.

Over by the windowsill, the silhouette of the cat seemed to _flicker_ somehow - to warp - as if its simple shape concealed something else, some shadow, some hulking form hidden in the space between this world and the next.

“Why would I expend energy pretending to be something I’m not?” 

“You already are,” Natsume chided. “You’re just doing a poor job, is all.”

The cat hummed, which was not something a cat should have been able to do. “Fair. But I shed my skin at night and when I walk in the forest, my feet make valleys of the hills.”

Natsume sighed. “Alright, well, I don’t know what you want me to say to _that_ , but you’re going to have to start behaving like a proper cat or else I’m going to take you to the vet. I won’t have anybody thinking the Fujiwaras are irresponsible pet owners.”

The cat flicked its ear to and fro, perhaps to warn away a buzzing mosquito. “Oh, but how could anyone think such a thing when they take such great care of you?”

Natsume, who had been crouching over the pile of laundry and desperately trying to pick stray clumps of fur off his spare uniform blazer, straightened abruptly and gave the cat a sharp look.

“ _I’m not a pet_.”

“Riddle me this,” said the cat. “If a mother, a father, and their son are not under an umbrella, why aren’t they getting wet?”

“Because it’s not raining.”

The cat eyed him. “Very good. Now you ask me one.”

Natsume, taken aback by the sudden shift in conversation, thought for a moment. “What’s always in front of you, but you can never see it?”

The cat cackled, which is also not something any cat ought to do. “Yokai!”

Natsume glared. “It’s the future. You knew that one.”

Madara shrugged. It was a supremely un-catlike gesture, and watching it gave Natsume chills. “Very well, ask me another.”

“Where can you find cities, towns, shops, houses, and streets, but no people?”

The cat was silent. It licked its paw coquettishly, no doubt pondering the riddle. “Oh! I’ve got it. It’s a map, isn’t it?” The creature smiled wide. Natsume caught a glimpse of sharp, supremely un-catlike teeth. “Awfully clever for a human boy, but then again - you’re not a human boy at all, are you?”

Natsume said nothing.

“Let’s have another round - what has hands but doesn’t applaud?”

Natsume did not reply.

“Too hard for you? Okay, how about this: What has a neck but no head?”

Natsume looked at the ground. “I don’t want to play this game.”

The cat’s grin was wider than ever, its teeth sharper than ever. “Say you’ve drawn a line. Without touching it, how do you make your line longer?”

“I said I don’t want to play anymore!”

He felt something brush against his foot. When he looked down, he saw there was a feather on the floor, resting lightly atop his sock. Natsume did not have a mirror in his room and he was glad of it.

Madara scoffed. “And you say _I’m_ doing a poor job of pretending.”

Numbly, Natsume realized his hands were hurting, his fingernails digging into his palms. He turned, made for the open window.

“Where are you off to this late?”

He needed air, he told himself as he clambered gracelessly over the windowsill.

“Hey! Hey, you.” Madara said, flicking his tail in irritation as Natsume crawled out onto the roof.

Air, he needed air.

“Don’t ignore me! Tch.”

The _space between_ was real, tangible. There was a pocket in the world, a veil of liminality that one could reach into and withdraw as something new, something old, something other. Natsume closed his eyes and reached into that space now, into the place where he tucked his true form away, out of sight. The hidden world.

“I could make a fight or flight response joke.” Madara’s voice was far away now. “But I’m fairly sure you’ve made it for me.”

Natsume spread his wings and leapt off the edge into the wide night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi there. this was meant to be 5k but two days ago i blacked out and now i have this monster on my hands!
> 
> I'm quite emo about Natsume Yuujinchou, as I was younger than Natsume when I first picked up the manga and now I'm Natori's age exactly, which is really quite a spooky thing to think about! I've written a couple of fics for the series, but all of them have focused on the adult exorcist characters so far; this is my first fic largely dealing with Natsume and his team. For a long time, I was afraid of writing about the main plotline and themes of the series (Natsume's life, his family, his issues with trust and inheritance, etc) because I didn't see any opportunities for me to add to them - these things are so deftly handled in the manga and anime adaptation that I was afraid I might break them.
> 
> So I'm really glad I participated in this event - it's been a lot of fun, and it's challenged me in ways I didn't expect. A big thanks to the mods, who did such a stellar job of organizing the whole thing, and another thanks (of course) to Mir, the artist I was fortunate enough to collab with! Her art is excellent so please consider giving her a cheeky follow over @mirarts on tumblr


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The ghouls and spirits walked in several worlds, whereas mankind was limited to only one. According to Natori Shuuichi, this was the least of Natsume’s problems.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've endeavored to keep this AU as canon-compliant as possible, including characterization. That being said, one or two of characters are purposely written a bit differently than usual, chiefly Madara and Natori. If Natsume was a yokai, I think they would behave...differently towards him than they do in canon, as Natsume being non-human would fundamentally change the premise of their entire relationship.
> 
> I hope I've succeeded, but there's also a chance the Natori flashback scene might come off as a bit OOC. I'd love to know what you think in the comments!

“Are any of you familiar with the legend of the  _ yosuzume _ ?”

The next week was calm, placid: light showers drifted through the mountains, and every morning Natsume was greeted with new leaves on the ground, plastered to the path by the previous night’s rain. The undergrowth was heavy with water, and Touko complained that her tomato plants were dying from oversaturation. Branches bent and snapped, and the excess of moisture sent worms wriggling up onto the pavement, intent on escaping the oncoming flood. And still, the land and the wind was alive in a way they had not felt in months.

“The  _ yosuzume _ , or night sparrow, was a type of bird yokai said to live in the prefectures of Aichi, Wakayama, Ehime and, more recently, our own.” Up at the front of the class, the teacher was reading aloud from a battered textbook.

Natsume, who was in fact familiar with the legend of the yosuzume, said nothing.

“The night sparrow was rumored to bring terrible ill luck on any human who caught and mistreated it,” continued the teacher, “and conversely, warned kind villagers of danger - sometimes, if there was a wild dog or other source of peril further along the path, so many night sparrows would descend as to obstruct travel completely, preventing passersby from meeting their cruel fate.”

Natsume felt the scratch of paper at his elbow and looked down to find an origami airplane sitting on the desk. He tried craning his neck back to look at Nishimura without appearing suspicious, to no avail.

When he carefully unfolded the plane and smoothed its creases, the words on the slip of paper were phrased like a telegram:  **DYING OF BOREDOM. STOP. TELL MY FAMILY I LOVED THEM. STOP. NANATSUJI’S AFTER CLASS? STOP.**

He stifled a wheeze.

“Did you find something I said amusing, Natsume Takashi?” the teacher inquired mildly from the blackboard.

Natsume’s head snapped up. Students were turning their heads to look in his direction.

“No, teacher. I had an itch in my throat. Sorry, teacher.”

“That’s what I thought.”

To Natsume’s right, Kitamoto raised a hand. “Will this be on the exam?” Silently, Natsume thanked his friend for drawing the class’s attention away from him.

“This, along with everything covered in yesterday’s module.” The man blinked, bowing his head back to his book. He cleared his throat and continued, “But to incur the wrath of the yosuzume was to invite terror and bad fortune upon one’s home, family, and land. The worst of all these effects was a form of supernatural  _ night blindness _ , the inability to see in darkness.”

Natsume crushed the paper up into a tight ball, all evidence of the illicit mid-lecture conversation destroyed.

“Don’t we already have the inability to see in the dark?” he overheard someone ask indignantly from the back. There came a chorus of soft laughter from the surrounding students.

“Giggle all you want,” sighed the teacher, closing his book with an air of finality, “but you may not be laughing come test day - which is at the end of this week, I might add! Make sure to include manuscript dates in your study guides, I cannot stress that enough.”

Later, as the class began to disperse, Nishimura came to clap Natsume on the back.

“Man, this is supposed to be History, isn’t it? I don’t see why we’re expected to memorize these dusty old folktales.”

“Those dusty folktales are a vital part of our prefecture’s cultural heritage, I’ll have you know.” Sasada had already finished packing up her books and was tapping her foot irritatedly against the side of Natsume’s desk. “Not to mention a major drive for our tourist industry.”

Kitamoto scoffed. “What tourist industry? Nobody lives out this way except farmers and the children of farmers. And Natsume.”

But Natsume wasn’t listening. He had sidled up to the teacher, who was busy sweeping his notes and file folders into a briefcase and looking somewhat put-upon.

“Excuse me, sir, but I had a question.”

The teacher looked up in surprise. “Oh?”

“The yosuzume - the, uh, the sparrow ayakashi - are there any records of it taking on a human form?”

The teacher smiled, a crease forming between his eyes. “Well, of course not. The creature isn’t  _ real _ , after all.” He pushed his spectacles farther up the bridge of his nose. “I suppose you mean to ask whether such a phenomenon appears in the folklore...no, no, I don’t believe so.” He began rooting around in his briefcase. “Although there are plenty of tales about other yokai taking on a human shape.”

The teacher drew his arm from the bag and proffered a thin, plain-looking book bound in fabric.

“There are many stories of changelings,” he continued, “you know - spirits and demons that replace human children, and are subsequently raised by human families. It’s like a paranormal form of brood parasitism, yes? The incidents in which cuckoos leave their own young to be brought up by other bird species. You recall from Natural Science, I trust?”

The teacher extended the book towards Natsume, who made no move to take it. After a long, awkward minute, he tucked it back into his briefcase.

“At any rate,” sighed the man, “you don’t have to worry: none of that will be tested.”

“Thank you,” said Natsume, but his teacher had already turned away.

**. . .**

The ghouls and spirits walked in several worlds, whereas mankind was limited to only one. According to Natori Shuuichi, this was the least of Natsume’s problems.

“You’re not dead or mad,” Natori had informed him on the day they’d met. He had said this to Natsume so casually, as if he was merely telling him about the weather or a noteworthy baseball match.

They stood at opposite ends of a bridge in winter, one with school supplies in-hand, the other wearing a particularly atrocious hat. The frigid air made clouds of Natsume’s breath.

“My associate and I can’t seem to agree upon what sort of demon you are,” said the man in the hat. The associate in question hovered beside his shoulder - a willowy ghost in an oni mask, floating waiflike behind her human master. The mask’s single, unblinking eye bored into Natsume, and he adjusted his grip on his messenger bag, wondering if he ought to make a run for it.

Instead he asked, “Do you usually begin conversations this way?”

Natori spluttered and laughed. “Sometimes! If my work calls for it.”

Natsume felt his eyes narrow involuntarily. “Your work?”

The man in the bucket hat took a step towards him, and Nyanko, who had until then reclined in silence at the bottom of Natsume’s school bag, popped his head out to bear his teeth in a wide hiss.

“Hey, sensei, don’t be rude!”

The man approached, his movements slower this time, protracted and steady and purposefully unimposing; the way his ghoulish associate’s fingers tightened around the hilt of her weapon did not escape Natsume’s notice.

“Here.” The man held out a business card. “I’m an exorcist,” he said, as if that was a normal thing for a grown man to say.

Natume stared at his outstretched hand. Just under the surface of his skin, a shadow skittered.

“I like your tattoo,” he said. He had lived with the Fujiwaras now for nearly half a year, and had nearly forgotten what a lie tasted like. “I can’t imagine they let you into onsen with it?”

The man in the hat did not dignify that with an answer, merely smiled placidly. “If you don’t want the card, you can just say so.”

“No, that’s alright.” Natsume barely glanced at the thing before slipping it into his back pocket. “How could you tell?” he asked, “That I’m…”

Natori adjusted his glasses, letting the remark hang there. Natsume had begun to wonder whether he was enjoying the uncomfortable silence, when suddenly he broke it.

“Interesting.” His smile was warm. “You can’t say it, can you? Curious, but not unsurprising. Have you ever admitted to it before? Out loud, I mean.”

Natsume shifted his weight from foot to foot, restless, shivering even though he did not suffer the cold the way other people did.   


“Look, I need to go,” he said. “I’m late for school.”

“No you’re not. Yokai don’t have to attend school.”

Ah, there it was - the feeling of a knife between his ribs, small and hot like a smoldering ember. Natsume’s free hand worried at the fringe of his sweater, fluttering uselessly.

“To answer your question, I could tell by your spirit, your energy, of course - but there are other signs, too.” Natori’s arms hung by his side. The two of them had been standing on that bridge for a while now, and Natsume realized with a start that it must have taken all Natori’s focus to keep his posture so relaxed; he ought to have been stamping his feet in the cold.

“What kind of signs?”

“Oh, you know, the little things. The way you move your head, it’s...ah, how should I put this? Birdlike? Yes, somewhat birdlike.”

He watched the man remove his glasses to give the lenses a quick polish on the lapels of his windbreaker.

Natsume squinted. “Wait a minute,” he said, remembering Touko’s third-favorite late-night soap opera. “Were you on TV?” The man’s face was awfully familiar all of a sudden.

Natori replaced the spectacles. “It’s been known to happen,” he said, an edge of irritation creeping into his voice.

“You were in the remake of that American movie, weren’t you?” Natsume wracked his brains for the title and came up with nothing. “The one with the vampires.”

Natori looked tired suddenly, and maybe even a bit embarrassed. “Er, yes. I admit, that picture wasn’t my best work. It was my agent’s idea.”

Natsume looked down into the depths of his schoolbag; its shoulder strap was beginning to weigh uncomfortably on his back. “Sensei, do you remember what that movie was called?”

“Oy!” The cat waved a paw, ignoring the question. “What’s a trained actor doing poking his surgically-sculpted nose around this godforsaken corner of the countryside? Bothering teenagers, is it?” He sniffed. “You out of proper work or something?”

“Hey!” The bucket hat man sounded mildly offended. “This is the nose I was born with, I’ll have you know!”

Nyanko pawed at Natsume’s thick winter coat. “Mm, Natsume, this guy is definitely unemployed.”

“You stop that!”

_ Birdlike _ , Natsume thought,  _ Somewhat birdlike _ . He wondered how long this man had been observing him. It was not a comforting thing to wonder.

“Actors usually stay in Tokyo where the big studios are, don’t they.” Desperately, he hoped his voice did not waver. “Are you out here to film a movie?”

Natori shook his head, smiling in what Natsume would come to know as that trademark mild, overbearingly pleasant way of his.

“No indeed. I was called out on an exorcism job, I’m afraid. Your area is quite rife with spirits, though I suppose you already know all about that already.”

Natusme didn’t, not really, but he kept quiet as Natori’s gaze fell once more on his dress shoes, his uniform slacks peeking out from beneath dense layers of cold-weather clothing, his school bag.

“You’re living with a human family, I take it?”

“I live with  _ my _ family,” Natsume retorted, surprised at how his breath jumped, at how his chest ached. He’d never called them that before. It was so easy?  _ It was so easy _ .

Flakes of snow drifted down to whirl in little eddies along the path. Up ahead, on the bridge, Natori watched him with an unobtrusive sort of curiosity. He was a very good actor, after all.

“You’re going to hurt them, you realize,” Natori said evenly. “Not intentionally, of course, but you will. Humans and yokai don’t mix. It never ends well.”

Natsume exhaled slowly. He didn’t remember holding his breath. “I’m not dead and I’m not mad. You said it yourself. Maybe things will be different this time. Maybe they’ll be better.”

_ Because it’s me _ . Natsume could not allow himself to think it.  _ Maybe it’ll work out because it’s me _ . He was not like most yokai. He had a living body, working lungs. He had not lost his mind or faculties. He didn’t have fangs or claws. Maybe, just maybe, they would all live through this.

“You’re not dead,” Natori repeated, “yet. You’re not mad  _ yet _ .”

Natsume stood there, blinking. He stood there for a long time.

“Yes,” he said eventually, “well. You’re not dead either. Yet.”

He stepped forward, and did not miss how Natori took a small, nearly imperceptible step back. He continued walking. He had probably already missed the first module of the schoolday, but there was little to be done about it now.

As he passed Natori by, the man turned to ask, “Would you like to come along some time? To watch me work.”

Natsume had never seen an exorcism and he didn’t think he’d like to. Still…

“Perhaps,” he said.

Natori inclined his head with a sly smile. “You’re not afraid I’ll exorcise you?”

“I don’t think you could,” Natsume said coolly, “even if you tried.”

And he went on his merry way.

“Foolish boy! You remind me of your grandmother,” Nyanko told him crossly as they hurried away down the path, “but never when I expect you to.”

Natsume smiled. The look on the actor’s face had been well worth it.

Natori Shuuichi did not call on him again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my soundtrack for writing this fic was an acoustic jpn band called Humbert Humbert; their stuff is very folksy and evocative of the countryside, so it really vibes with the setting of NatsuYuu. the song i listened to for this chap is called "Yokogao Shika Shiranai"
> 
> OH, ALSO! Have you figured out the answers to the riddles in the previous chapter? Let me know in the comments


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> bro all my homies are portents of doom

“Hey, what do you want?” Tanuma called over the din. “I’m buying!”

Natsume wanted to protest, but there wasn’t space or sound for it. Even here, in this isolated sliver of countryside, the Nanatsuji Bakery was busy. Arriving during the afternoon rush, the students had to squeeze between customers for a place at the counter.

After picking up their baked goods and escaping the claustrophobic press of bodies, the two of them quit the bustling interior of the store with its cramped seating in favor of the wide, grassy slopes beside the river, where the others waited.

“Woohooooo!”

Kitamoto crouched by the edge of the water. Normally the river was shallow here, little more than a creek, but in light of the recent downpour it had swollen. Its surface, usually so glassy and smooth, was now awash in noisy white foam.

From afar, Natsume watched his friend pick up a stone and hurl it across the water. It just barely skimmed the crested tops of the little waves and crashed into a stout tower of stacked rocks on the opposite bank. The tower collapsed with a sound like thunder.

“Did you see that?” Nishimura hollered and waved his arms when he caught sight of Natsume and Tanuma approaching. “My aim is unbeatable!”

Kitamoto clicked his tongue disapprovingly. “Your form is all wrong. Everyone knows you can’t skip stones on running water! You have to wait ‘til the surface is still.”

“I’m not trying to  _ skip stones _ ,” Nishimura retorted. “I’m trying to knock  _ those things _ over.” He flailed a single arm to indicate the little towers dotting the riverscape. They extended into the distance as far as the eye could see.

Taki pouted. “Local kids build those, don’t they? Seems cruel to destroy all their hard work.”

She was sitting on the slope of the bank beside Sasada, water-proof raincoats spread out beneath them to stop the dew from soaking into their clothes. Overhead, the sky was a mottled patchwork of grays and whites and a bright, bright blue; the kind of sky that occurs when a storm clears, swept away by the wind.

“No, let him,” said Sasada, putting down her book of puzzles for a moment to point at the nearest stack of smooth river stones. “Those things disrupt the local ecosystem. They make it harder for fish and salamanders to traverse the river to follow their natural mating patterns.”

“Ew.” Kitamoto frowned, but his face lit up when Tanama handed him a brown paper bag with the bakery’s logo printed on the side. “Oh, hey! Thanks.”

Taki scooted over to make room for Natsume. All along the bank, the bright heads of the wildflowers bobbed in the breeze. He sat and tipped his head back, letting the wind stir in his hair, and thought about the first time he’d ever skipped stones.

It had been a warm day the fall prior. He’d walked half the way home with the others, a then-recent ritual that had filled Natsume with an unfamiliar kind of terror: he’d never had classmates who seemed so intent on befriending him before. This meant, of course, that their disappointment and anger would be all the greater when they realized he was not worth befriending.

When they’d reached the place where their paths usually diverged, Kitamoto had suggested that they take a small detour in the woods. He said it with a smile that told Natsume he had some specific plan in mind, and Nishimura’s quick assent told him he was the only one who was not in on the joke. Warily, he’d followed the two boys into the forest.

They had not walked for long when they came upon a small lake. It was a windless day and the water was a vast, flat expanse of silver, calm and without motion.

“I didn’t know this was here,” Natsume said, eyes scanning the horizon for any sign of yokai or trouble - usually they were a two-in-one package deal.

“Yeah, there’s lots of great little spots like this around here,” said Kitamoto. The boys had come to a stop at the place where the lake’s edge lapped softly at the shore, and now he stooped to rifle through the loose stones at his feet. “You’ll see - the longer you stay in this area, the more of them you’ll find.”

“I’ve lived here my whole life,” said Nishimura with a grin, “and I’m still finding cool spots to explore all the time, it’s wild.”

_ The longer you stay. _

Natsume wondered how long it would be this time, but he was startled from his reverie by the sight of Kitamoto picking up a wide, flat rock and turning in his direction, his elbow drawn back, hand ready to throw.

Natusme’s body had reacted without thinking: he flinched, arms coming up reflexively to protect his head, while his legs stumbled backwards, intent on getting him as far away as possible.

But nothing happened. Whatever pain he’d been expecting, it did not come. When he lowered his guard enough to peek at his classmates, he found them standing not far off, concern drawn plainly on their faces.

“I- I wasn’t going to throw it  _ at you _ ,” Kitamoto faltered, the hand that gripped the rock lowering slightly.

Beside him, Nishimura was frowning. “Don’t tell me you’ve never skipped stones before, Natsume?”

Natsume hadn’t. He looked between the two of them, saw their expressions go from confused to anxious. His stomach jumped.  _ Think, think _ . How could he salvage the situation?

But as Natsume was desperately wracking his brain in search of a way to spin this whole thing into a joke, he felt a hand come down on his shoulder,

“Look, c’mon, we’ll show you.” Kitamoto was pressing the stone into his hand. In his palm, it felt just smooth enough. “Watch me do it, okay?”

“Yeah, it’s real easy once you get the hang of it,” Nishimura laughed nervously, the unease beginning to drain from his voice. “You just have to practice.”

And he spent the whole afternoon like that, watching the pull-back and release of Kitamoto’s arm when he spun a rock out over the wide stretch of lake, tight and then slack again, just like a bowstring.

_ “Jeez, I can’t believe you’ve never done this. They don’t have lakes in the big city, huh?” _

Now, in the present, Natsume let himself lean back, stretched out on the bank, let his head dip beneath the dancing stems of the long reeds as they waved in the wind.

Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Taki open her bag of pastries. Fragrant steam wafted up from inside.

“Red bean or Hokkaido cream, Natsume?”

“Red bean, please.”

Closeby, there came again the sound of a pile of stones tumbling back into the brook, sending up spray. Natsume sat up just in time to watch Kitamoto do a little hop, attempting to scramble back up the bank.

“Hey, stop that! You’re getting water on me, you dunce!”

Nishimura’s look was mischievous. “But I  _ have _ to do this, it’s for the environment! Didn’t you hear Class President? The fish can’t have babies if I don’t knock these towers down.”

“Ew, stop, gross.”

Nishimura knelt by the river’s babbling edge and submerged a hand in the rapids, only to flick it up again. Kitamoto jumped back to avoid the splash zone.

“Come on, I’m providing an important service to the community!”

“You know,” remarked Tanuma casually, “I read that you’re only supposed to build those little rock towers along trails that have been overgrown, or are wearing away. They’re supposed to guide hikers to the top of a mountain.”

“I see…” Sasada looked intrigued. “So if people build them just anywhere, hikers might end up getting lost?”

Tanuma nodded, and bent to accept the steamed bun that Taki offered him.

“Hey, you there!”

Natsume raised his head. On the embankment above stood a wrinkled man in olive green galoshes. He cupped a hand around his mouth to be heard over the rush and roar of the water.

“You kids had better get away from the water!”

Nishimura stopped tormenting Kitamoto long enough to squint up the slope of the hill. “Old Man Tsukishima?”

“One more thunderstorm and she’ll burst her banks, you mark my words!” The man jabbed an accusatory finger first at the sky, then at the water far below. “It’s a spirit that’s doing this. Something that lives in these hills is sorely displeased!”

Nishimura looked at Sasada, who looked at Taki, who looked at Kitamoto, who looked back to Nishimura.

Natsume and Tanuma looked at each other.

“Ah, thank you, sir.” Sasada was the one to stand and raise her voice. “We’ll be careful.”

The elderly man snorted. “You don’t believe me. I’ve seen it all before, you know.” He turned with a chuckle. “Mark my words! Oh, and give my regards to your mother and father, Satoru.”

Nishimura stammered, “Yes, sir, I will!”

Once they were sure Tsukishima was out of earshot, the students allowed themselves to laugh a bit.

“I wonder if I’ll be like that when I’m older,” Taki chuckled. “I hope so.”

“If you live to see old age, you’re basically allowed to say whatever you want to anybody,” said Kitamoto sagely. “That kind of freedom seems worth the aches and pains, doesn’t it?”

**. . .**

“I’ve decided to run for office,” said Nishimura as he nudged open the Fujiwaras’ front gate, “and when I become Prime Minister, I’m going to outlaw poetry.”

“What happened to using poetry to pick up girls?” asked Kitamoto. The gate swung on creaking hinges.

He groaned aloud. “This assignment is too hard! Is a girlfriend really worth the price in human misery?”

Natsume laughed. “I don’t think that’s how girls work.”

Tanuma looked to Taki and Sasada. “Is it?”

The two of them exchanged a look.

“You’re taking too long to decide.” Nishimura crossed his arms. “So I’m outlawing poetry.”

When they entered the house, they found Touko standing up on a chair in the front hallway. When the door slid open, she beamed at them.

“Hello there!”

Natsume divested himself of his bags and came around to steady the chair. “Did the light bulb go out? Here, I can do that.”

As he moved forward, he heard glass crunch distantly beneath the soles of his shoes and froze.

“Oh! No dear, I’m perfectly fine, thank you.” Touko flicked a strand of hair from her face. “I’ll have to ask you all not to take your shoes off just yet, though. Would you believe it, this bulb just burst out of nowhere!”

The others hovered by the genkan.

“I was looking out the window and caught sight of you all at the gate,” Touko explained. “I came into the hallway to unlock the door, and it just exploded for no reason. The light wasn’t even turned on.”

Taki looked like she was biting the inside of her cheek. “Just out of the blue? How strange…”

“Maybe it’s an electrical issue,” said Sasada, leaning on the doorframe. “Did you turn the light on?”

Touko shook her head. “I’m afraid not...I’ll ask Shigeru to take a look at it when he comes home.” She had finished replacing the bulb, and Natsume felt a warm kind of pain in his sternum when she leaned on him for support as she began to climb down off the chair.

The students waited in the threshold, chatting idly about their day, while Natsume helped Touko sweep up the shattered remains of the bulb. When the task was finished, they left their shoes in the entryway and tip-toed carefully inside and up the stairs, to stretch out on the tatami on Natsume’s bedroom floor.

“Teacher said we ought to…” Sasada trailed off, “What was it again? Dive deep into our past experiences to dig up emotional material.”

Nishimura balanced a pen between his nostrils and upper lip. “We’re sixteen! What experiences does she think we’re gonna write about? Hi sensei, here’s my poem about the time my dad asked me to mow the lawn…sheesh.”

“I think I could write a poem about my dad asking me to mow the lawn,” said Tanuma thoughtfully. “If I tried hard enough.”

Taki laughed. “Whoa, that  _ is _ a feat actually. Your family’s house is so big, the front garden is  _ huge _ .”

She reached into the bag of pastries and pulled back with a yelp of disgust.

“What is it?” Kitamoto leaned in. “Did a bug get in there?”

“It smells really bad,” Taki said, passing the bag over. “Like something’s rotten.”

Tanuma pulled one of the buns out and broke it in half over Natsume’s wastepaper bin. Sure enough, the cream inside had soured - the stench was abhorrent.

“Okay,” said Kitamoto, “that’s weird. Like, really weird. I mean, those are fresh-baked from like an hour ago, right? But it smells like they’re weeks old all of a sudden…”

Nishimura scratched his head. “That’s definitely weird. Maybe that old man was right and the town is cursed.”

Kitamoto elbowed him. “You shouldn’t joke about that sort of thing.”

Natsume tried to ignore the growing feeling of unease that had opened its wings inside the pit of his stomach.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the bit about cairns is true, by the way! those piles of rocks may look cool, but historically they've always served the important function of guiding travelers along overgrown trails. so if you're hiking and you want to build one, please don't put it in the middle of a stream or somewhere that isn't along the designated path <3
> 
> can you tell that nishimura and kitamoto are my favorite idiots? anyway, song for writing this chap was "Ashita no asaniwa" by Humbert Humbert


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which our young protagonist takes out a hit on himself

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i had so much fun recreating edgy high schooler poetry for the purposes of this fic, no cap. really does feel like doing emotional archaeology :, )

Life in the city had been less than ideal, naturally.

Natsume had lived in several cities over the course of his short life, but in his mind they had swollen and merged together like an amoeba to become a single entity, a single-celled organism that was The City.

Every city was the same, after all: dark, smoggy, crowded, and his lives in each of them had been much the same as well. Flying in the city was near-impossible and yet Natsume had done it anyway because he had to, because he couldn’t not do it, because flying was like breathing to him and to quit the air was like quitting life itself - a kind of quiet, consensual death of the self that did not bear consideration.

_ When you look for poetry, you must dive into your past _ , his Literature teacher had told the class, but there was no poetry there, nothing that glittered, not even the worst parts were tantalizingly romantic. There were only plain walls and empty plates and the numbing reality of coming home to a place that had never been a home, the feeling of knowing that no one’s life was any better for him having been in it.

Not that he didn’t have friends, of course. There were the crows in Kabukicho and the starlings in Shin-koiwa and the magpies that flocked to the little shrine on the corner by the flat where he’d lived for a time in a low-income Yokohama housing project.

The crows made for exciting - if incessant - conversation, and they let Natsume near enough their nests to admire the shiny trinkets they’d stolen from passing salarymen and tourists. He preferred the company of birds to the company of people and yokai both...and there  _ were _ yokai that lived in the city. Some lived there by accident, swallowed up as their woodlands and marshes became first suburbs, before slowly drowning under concrete and tarmac.

Other yokai lived there  _ by choice _ and these, Natsume had learned, were the ones to watch out for. He recalled one particular occasion, walking home late one evening, when a dark-suited man stumbled drunkenly out of a nearby izakaya and into Natsume’s path.

He’d paused there a minute to thoughtlessly admire the glinting silver buckles on the yakuza’s snakeskin shoes.

“The fuck are you looking at, huh?” The man’s voice was rough with liquor, but when his eyes met Natsume’s they flashed a brilliant gold for a minute, the unmistakable slit-pupiled eyes of a hungry fox. “Little sparrows ought to flutter off home, lest they fly straight into trouble, eh?”

Natsume had sprinted all the way back to the apartment; in the future, he avoided taking that route altogether.

Flying in the city was near-impossible. Natsume did it anyway, and coughed up black soot into the bathroom sink for days afterwards, only to go back out the following week to do the whole thing again. The sky was a lifeline, straight and true.

Only one of his guardians ever found out.

She was an elderly woman, a distant cousin several times removed and well into her late 70s by the time Natsume arrived.

“That boy isn’t human,” he’d overheard her tell her son and daughter-in-law on the day the couple came to help him move his stuff into storage and out of her house. “He has wings. They come out at night, I’ve seen them--”

“Granny, please, you  _ must _ calm down, it’s not good for your heart.”

“He’s not human,” his guardian said again. “His eyes aren’t right.”

Natsume never saw her again.

He’d long wondered whether his parents knew -  _ surely they must have, surely, surely _ \- and he found some semblance of an answer not long after he came to live with the Fujiwaras. At the back of his closet, hidden in the same box where he’d uncovered the Book of Friends, he found a framed picture. It was a sloppy crayon drawing of three stick figures, two of them tall, all of them pale-haired and smiling, one of them with broad, speckled wings in the place where its arms ought to be. The people on either side held their hands out to the winged creature in the middle, their hands (rounded and fingerless and rendered so by a child’s keen eye) grasping at the tips of its wings. 

_ A family? _

The date scrawled across the frame’s cardstock backing indicated that it had been drawn when Natsume was three. This was not proof, no, not quite - but something in him broke and he knew then that his parents had known and that _ it hadn’t even mattered _ . What a thing to lose.

His memories of them were scarce and fuzzy, but even so. What a thing to lose.

Natsume wondered idly, too, how he’d come to a human family in the first place when it seemed he so obviously did not belong in their world.  _ Brood parasitism _ . Perhaps it had something to do with the Book of Friends that Madara so jealously coveted, or maybe it was to do with Reiko herself - perhaps her dealings with the ayakashi had backfired and some spirit she’d angered had, in a fit of rage, stolen her true grandchild away in the dead of night, leaving behind a night sparrow in its place.

_ To find poetry, you must dive into your past _ .

To say that Natsume did not enjoy doing this would be an understatement; he did not enjoy dipping even a toe into his past. But after staring at his blank homework assignment for what felt like hours, he picked up a pen and began to write anyway.

**. . .**

The crops failed the following week.

Needless to say, it was disastrous. The rice drowned in runoff from the thunderstorms, whole paddies washed away in landslides, the barley withered and died in the fields, the burdock was eaten by worms and flies.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Shigeru murmured. The Fujiwaras did not make a habit of watching television and certainly not over dinner, but tonight Touko had moved the boxy old TV monitor into the dining room to hear what the specialists had to say.

“This town’s going to need government aid, if this continues.” Shigeru sipped pensively at his beer. “Imagine having so much bad luck in the space of just one month!”

“It’s unheard-of,” Touko agreed, her brows knitting together in worry. “Takashi-kun, would you like another serving?”

But Natsume found his appetite had vanished with the harvest.

Strange things were afoot in the Fujiwara household - doors slammed, lights flickered and burst, vases toppled over unprompted and dashed themselves to pieces on the floor. Groceries spoiled the moment they crossed over the threshold, fruits and vegetables that had looked so fresh and appetizing in the market now rotted and sunken.

“We’re being haunted,” Shigeru remarked lightly one afternoon. It was the first time Natsume had heard him speak openly about his superstitions without cracking a well-intentioned joke.

“You think so?” Touko was up autumn squash by the kitchen sink. “How quaint.”

At that, Natsume almost laughed despite his unease. “You’re not alarmed?”

“Ah, no,” she said. “Somehow, I don’t feel this ghost will harm us. That sort of thing’s just not in its nature.”

Shigeru chuckled. “Awfully trusting, aren’t you! Next you’ll be making sure the spirit’s getting enough to eat, knowing you.”

Touko placed her hands on her hips. “What of it? It wouldn’t be caught dead letting someone go without a nutritious lunch in my house - ghosts included!”

**. . .**

Things got worse.

Natsume’s classmates began missing school in greater and greater numbers as their parents pulled them from class, working around-the-clock on family farms to salvage what was left of that year’s harvest.

Tanuma was called out too, to assist his father at the temple.

“I guess when people get scared, they lean on religion,” Kitamoto commented, sullenly watching the back of Tanuma’s empty chair. “Half the town must be up there right now, praying that the gods don’t take the rest of their crops.”

“Yeah, I bet,” said Nishimura with a sniff. “Hey, let’s raid his desk for snacks.”

_ According to 12th-century sources, the yosuzume was rumored to bring terrible ill luck on any human who caught and mistreated it. To incur the wrath of the night sparrow was to invite terror and bad fortune upon one’s home, family, and land. _

On the ninth day of the flooding, Natsume dug Natori Shuuchi’s business card out of his pencil case and dialed the number printed on the back.

“Hi, um,” he breathed into the receiver, willing his voice not to shake. “Pardon me, but what are your rates? I- I need you to perform an exorcism.”

**. . .**

Natori’s arrival was marked by muted fanfare in the Fujiwara household. Touko recognized him from some sitcom and asked him to take a photo with her, offering him meals and pots of jam in return, and even the promise of a guided tour around the prefecture once the weather went back to normal. He declined the meal but accepted the jam graciously.

Shigeru, it seemed, was somewhat less charmed. “How is it that you know Takashi-kun again?”

“I used to volunteer at an after-school program for inner-city youth,” Natori explained smoothly, his face a seamless mask of benevolence. “Where we’d teach high schoolers about the joys of the theater.”

If Shigeru doubted him, he did not show it.

“Tch!  _ Acting program for inner-city youth _ ...” cried Nyanko-sensei when they had reached the privacy of Natsume’s room. “You’re even shadier than I thought!”

Natsume had to admit, it was a good lie - one of the only reasonable explanations for an adult stranger checking in on a child living so far away that actually made sense - and Natsume couldn’t help but wonder if it was a lie Natori fell back on often.

He stood now in the center of Natsume’s bedroom, hand worrying at the scarf around his neck and probably wondering whether he ought to remove it. Touko had offered to take his coat at the door and Natori had declined politely.

_ Well _ , Natsume thought,  _ I guess he won’t be here for very long _ .

He wondered how long an exorcism took.

“You live like a soldier, kid,” Natori said, doing a full-circle turn to take in his surroundings. “And you’re, what, sixteen or so? Get a boy band poster or something. It might help you blend in with people better.”

Natori laughed when he said it, but his smile did not quite reach his eyes.

_ Is he trying to put me at ease? _

When Natsume did not respond, he coughed lightly. “I spoke with my contacts before coming out here,” he said, “and checked the news, of course. I understand there’s been some trouble?”

Natsume nodded. His tongue was lead. Sensei circled his legs, letting out a soft hiss every now and then.

“I’m bringing people bad luck,” he said quietly. “I’m bringing  _ my family bad luck _ .”

He had not told Sensei why he had invited the exorcist here today. It was not something he knew how to explain.

Across from him, Natori cocked his head. “I did warn you.”

“Yeah.” Natsume felt a lump in his throat. “You did.”

“Still,” Natori said, removing his horrible bucket hat long enough to run a hand exasperatedly through his hair. “This is all a bit much, isn’t it?”

Natsume blinked. “Huh?”

“Intent does count for something, you know - in the spirit world more so than the human, I’d argue. If you’re causing bad luck without meaning to, the ill effects can probably be reversed, for the most part.”

_ Cruel _ .

It was cruel to give somebody false hope.

“But,” said Natsume, “what about the harvest? What about the landslides?” He shook his head. “You don’t understand, it’s  _ dangerous _ . It’s dangerous here because of me.”

Natori grimaced. “Shame about the harvest, true - I know next to nothing about crop rotation but I can’t say things look too good for the town this year. I hear the government is talking about stepping in with natural disaster relief, though.” He placed a hand on Natsume’s shoulder. “This place will survive, you realize. The land has lived through worse than the angsty deliberations of a school boy - even if that school boy  _ is _ a demon!”

His chuckle tapered off awkwardly when he realized no one else was laughing.

“You really should have brought your shiki servant,” Nyanko-sensei remarked grouchily from Natsume’s side, “so there’s always someone around to laugh at your jokes.”

“Oh?” Natori’s eye flashed. “I could summon her now, if you’d like.”

Natsume held up his hands, placating. “N-No, I don’t think that’ll be necessary--”

There came a distant call from downstairs and he excused himself to answer it. When he returned to his room with a plate of sliced plums, courtesy of Touko, he froze in the doorway.

“Natsume, is this…?”

Natori was leaning over his desk, eyes moving up and down across a page of lined journal paper, and when Natsume realized what the man was reading he felt himself flush red in the face.

“It’s for school!” he protested weakly. “H-Homework!”

Natori did not lift his eyes from the page. “Is that so?”

Natsume forced himself to be still, mortification squirming inside him like a snake, reminding him with each bite of its fangs how it was a mistake to leave his notebook lying open for the whole world to see.

“Everyone hates this assignment,” he said apologetically, unable to think of another excuse for the quality of his own writing. “Poetry is so hard, and I haven’t any idea how to tell what’s good and what’s not.”

Natori said nothing, head bent, eyes scanning as if in dream.

**ただいま /** **“TADAIMA”**

It’s polite to smile

It’s polite to say thank you

It’s polite to hold doors open for people

It’s polite to not leave dishes in the sink

It’s polite to not sleep with the lights on

It’s polite to take beetles outdoors instead of killing them

It’s polite to eat dinner

It’s polite to not eat too much dinner

It’s polite to not leave the window open

It’s polite to not run in the house

It’s polite to not be in the house

It’s polite to not frighten the neighbors

It’s polite to not frighten mom and dad

It’s polite to not ask for money

It’s polite to not as questions

It’s polite to be quiet

It’s polite to not talk with birds

It’s polite to not talk with shadows

It’s polite to not cry

It’s polite to not scream

It’s polite to say sorry again

It’s polite to smile

  
  


“This poem,” he said finally, looking up, “it’s about where you used to live? Before Touko-san and Shigeru-san, I mean.”

Solemnly, Natsume nodded. “Do you, er, read much poetry, Natori-san?”

“Only a little, I’m afraid.” The actor shook his head.

“Oh.” Inwardly, Natsume cursed in the language of the forest. Could this situation possibly be weirder? He hopped from foot to foot. “How bad is it?” 

At that, something in Natori’s face changed, shifted, though Natsume could not name what it was. “It’s not bad,” he said, straightening, “A bit melodramatic, of course, but that’s to be expected. I mean, what’s the point of being a teenager if you’re not going to write melodramatic poetry?” His laugh was loud at first, then grew softer as his eyes drifted back to the page.

“Natsume,” he said slowly, “I think I know why this is happening. The crops, the light bulb, the spoiled food, all of it. I think I understand now.”

“Oh?” Natsume resisted the urge to fling the windows open and fly away.

For the first time that he could recall, Natori Shuuichi looked...not troubled exactly, but uncomfortable somehow.

“I think you’re angry, Natsume. You’re still angry at the people you used to live with.”

“But--”  _ No _ . No, that couldn't be right. “But why now--?”

Natori heaved a deep sigh and adjusted his glasses. “Sometimes you don’t notice you’re in a bad situation until you get out of it. It’s a perspective thing.” Natori waved a hand as if to demonstrate, and succeeded in demonstrating absolutely nothing. “In order to recognize that you’re being treated poorly, usually you need to have been treated well - so that you have a frame of reference, something to compare it to.”

Natsume felt blank inside. He was a snowy hillside. He was a sheet of paper.

“There’s a chance I’m wrong,” Natori sighed, “but I think you might only just now be realizing that things used to be bad. It’s-- I get it.”

_ Anger _ , Natsume thought dully. So it was anger - his own anger - that was curdling the milk and killing the wheat and flooding the land for miles around. Half a harvest destroyed, and  _ for what? _ Just because a stranger had hit him, or forgotten to feed him, or given him up? The whole thing was ridiculous, senseless. It was white noise.

“So how do I stop?” Natsume’s hands were fists by his sides. “How do I  _ make it all stop?” _

Natori gave him a pained look. “I can’t tell you,” he said sadly. “This is the sort of thing you might never stop being angry about, not completely. The sort of wound that takes a long, long time to heal up.”

Natsume got the vague sense he was being talked down to like a child, but he also got the vague sense that he wasn’t the only person in the room being  _ talked to _ at all.

“You’re like me,” he said at last. “You’re angry.”

Natori nodded.

“You were in a bad situation too.”

Natori smiled like a festival mask again. “Anyway,” he said, changing the subject so gracelessly it was almost comical, “I don’t think my services are required here today, though I’ll accept a half-charge fee for my inspection.” He moved to exit the room and in doing so, paused at the door. To Natsume’s extreme shock, he reached out and placed an open-palmed hand atop his head in a friendly, albeit awkward, touch. “Your parents would be very upset if something happened to you, I suspect.”

_ Parents. _ Natsume’s brain and heart were doing a double gymnastics routine inside him.

“Sheesh!” growled Nyanko when Natori had departed. “For an actor, that guy sure does know how to make an anticlimactic exit.”

He trotted over to the table and began swallowing sliced plums with wolfish abandon.

“Exeunt,” Natsume corrected.

“Eh?”

“It’s called an  _ exeunt _ , not an exit, when someone leaves the stage. We learned it in school.”

The cat eyed him. “I never thought I’d say this to a bird, but you really need to get out more.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nice to meet you, i exist for one reason and one reason only: putting natori shuuichi through deeply uncomfortable situations
> 
> (song for this chap was "Okaerinasai" by Humbert Humbert)


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the very first section of this chap is a flashback

Taki and Tanuma knew, of course.

Their discovery of him had been swift and terrifying and, in retrospect, kind of hilarious. It was an objective fact of the natural world that birds molted once-to-thrice a year, and yokai were really not so different.

It was a clear, crisp day in early spring, half a year after he’d first moved to town; Natsume awoke to find his bedsheets littered with loose, downy feathers.

_ No, please no, not today, not now--! _

What should have been no more than a mild inconvenience was, under Touko’s attentive watch, a real risk of being discovered.

By midday, his wings were nearly bare.

The molting continued well into the next day, and the next. Natsume rolled the stray feathers up into his futon and stayed home from school all week, faking a raspy cough.

On the first day, Sasada had stopped by with his missed coursework.

On the third day, Kitamoto stopped by with a computer game and some comics.

On the fifth day, Nishimura turned up, complaining of boredom. All of them Shigeru turned away kindly at the door at Natsume’s request.

_ “He’s still feeling under the weather, but I’ll let him know you called!” _

From the safety of the upstairs window, Natsume watched them leave through the garden gate one-by-one, feeling lonely and rotten all the while. His wings itched terribly.

On day no.7, there came a knock at the front door.

The Fujiwaras were out at the time, Touko at the grocer’s and Shigeru at work, and Natsume wondered who could possibly be calling. He was just coming down the stairs to peek through the spyhole when he heard the door slide open.

“Natsume?”

It was Tanuma Kaname’s voice. Natsume staggered back, tripping up the stairs. Would his classmate really dare to just walk into Shigeru’s home unprompted?! It was the sort of thing he’d expect of Nishimura maybe, but not Tanuma.

“Natsume, it’s me. I brought you some of my dad’s citron tea for your throat.”

“G-Go away!” he called down, wincing at how boorish the command sounded. “Sorry, I’m very sick, it’s…” Natsume coughed loudly for emphasis, “...the doctor said it’s contagious!”

There was silence and then, from the direction of the genkan came Tanuma’s voice again, patient but weary. “You haven’t been to the doctor.”

Natsume, who crouched at the top of the stairwell behind the landing bannisters, balked. “How do you know?”

Tanuma sighed. “The doctor’s my next-door neighbor.”

_ Everyone knows everyone else in this town _ , Shugeru had warned him jokingly.  _ Gossip spreads like wildfire - it’s the best entertainment the countryside can offer! _

Natsume had thought Shigeru was teasing him about his weekend fashion choices, but now he realized that the man had been serious.

Another sigh. “The tea’s getting cold. Natsume, I’m coming up, okay?”

He retreated into his bedroom, frantically looking around for a place to hide. His wings were on full display now - it itched to keep them hidden during molting season - and they brushed the confines of the cramped upper hallway as he swept down the corridor and into his room.

The little space was absolutely littered with feathers, brown and black and white ones. Footsteps creaked on the stairs.

Was there any chance to escape? No, even if he flew out the window, there was no way he could explain away all the feathers that lay scattered in heaps across the room.

Behind him, the door slid open.

“Natsu..me..?”

Tanuma was staring, bewildered.

“I’m, uh.” Natsume wished he could melt into the floor. “Working on a crafting project.”

Tanuma blinked.

A full minute passed.

“You have wings,” he said.

“Yeah,” said Natsume, “they’re, uh, part of the crafting project.”

Tanuma blinked. “Uh-huh.”

A full minute passed again.

All the while, Natsume’s mind raced. This was not going as he’d expected it to, and he could not yet decide whether that was a good or bad thing. There was no screaming yet. There was no running yet, no pitchforks or torches. He felt a bead of sweat trickle down the back of his neck.

Finally, Tanuma cleared his throat and held out what looked like a glass mason jar filled with syrup. “For your cold,” he said again, “although I suppose you won’t be needing it after all.”

Natsume shuffled forward to accept it, closing the gap between them.

“Um. Thank you. Tell your dad thanks for me.”

“I will.”

Another minute passed before Tanuma said, “So when are you coming back to school?”

Natsume inclined his head to indicate the shedding feathers. “When I stop molting. It’ll be maybe another day or two at most.”

Surreal, this was surreal. He couldn’t believe he was standing here in full yokai mode, chatting casually with a human as if it didn’t even matter. Any moment now, the spell would break and Tanuma would dash down the road screeching. Any moment now.

But Tanuma only sat down on the tatami. “Are you okay?” he asked.

“Okay?!” The word came out as a breathless, hysterical laugh. Natsume was so dizzy, he felt like he might pass out. “I should be asking you that question!”

Tanuma merely shrugged.

“It’s not that unusual, not in these parts. I actually suspected something might be up with you,” he confessed. “That’s why I wanted to come check.” He rubbed at the back of his neck, faint color rising to his cheeks. “I am sorry for barging in, though. I guess that was rude of me.”

Natsume shook his head vigorously, unable to speak: if he did, there would be either laughter or tears, and at this point he could not begin to imagine which would come first. A stray feather floated through the air. He watched Tanuma catch it between forefinger and thumb.

“I thought you were being haunted by a demon,” he said contemplatively. “But it turns out you  _ are _ the demon! Imagine that.”

Natsume decided he liked the sound of Tanuma’s laugh.

“Oy! Think again!”

Nyanko-sensei had materialized on the top shelf of the bookcase and was glaring down at the boys with disdain. “He  _ is _ being haunted - by me!”

Tanuma nearly jumped out of his own skin.

“AAAUGH!! PONTA??”

Nyanko hopped down from the shelf and grinned, making sure all five concentric rows of teeth were visible. 

“I knew it! I  _ knew _ you weren’t a cat!”

Tanuma wiped at his brow, the recovery of his nerves clearly an effort.

A new voice rang up from downstairs. “Natsume-kun? Tanuma? Is everything okay up there? Can I come up now?”

Natsume turned to Tanuma, who had taken a sudden interest in the grain pattern on the tatami mat. Guilt was an odd look on him.

“Oh yeah,” he said, “you know Taki-san from school? Well, I forgot to mention - she’s here, too.”

And that was that.

**. . .**

Disaster - true disaster - struck the week after Natori’s visit.

It was a sunny day, the first sunny day in recent memory, and Natsume lingered on the fenced-in garden on the rooftop of the school, weaving his fingers through the chain link netting and wondering if the weather would be safe enough to fly later.

“Hey there!”

An arm wrapped around his neck from behind, and Natsume felt his whole body seize up.

“Whoa, man!”

It was Nishimura. Of course it was Nishimura.

“Don’t flinch so hard, yeah? It’s just me,” his classmate laughed. “Scaredy-cat.”

“Sorry,” Natsume mumbled.

Kitamoto, who appeared to have just popped out of the woodwork, frowned. “You don’t have to keep saying that.”

“Okay, get this,” Nishimura barrelled on, “ _ Hiking _ . Revolutionary, I know.”

Natsume’s hand drifted up to grip gently at Nishimura’s arm. The other boy’s weight was a solid, warm presence that made Natsume feel both skittish and secure all at once. He did his best to brush off the feeling like cobwebs in a corner.

“Hiking? I’ve heard of it.”

“Pffft. Y’know, you’re petty funny for a guy who has all the sensibilities of your average grandma. I meant  _ us _ : you, me, Atsushi. Tanuma can come too - heck, let’s bring Sasada along! Provided she’s not studying her butt off after school.”

“Wait, you mean  _ today?” _ Natsume turned to face him, swatted his friend away.

Nishimura finger-gunned at him. “No time like the present, right?” He tipped his head back into the blue sky. “I mean, who knows when we’ll get weather like this again?”

“Sounds good,” Natsume said. It did sound good. The sun was warm. The wind was high. He smiled and tried to swallow his growing feeling of unease. “But I can’t today. I still haven’t made any progress on that poetry assignment.”

Nishimura pouted. “Oh come onnnnnn, it’s not due for another week!” he whined, and only dropped the subject after Natsume’s third time declining.

**. . .**

Disaster struck, as it so often does, over dinner.

The kitchen was thick with steam and smoke, and Natsume got up to open the little window above the kitchen sink to let the fumes out. Fried gyoza spit in the pan by the stove, sizzling in hot oil.

“I think I made too much again,” Touko resigned. “Ach, well. A good problem to have, no?”

Shigeru, who had arrived home just moments ago, sat down at the table to crack open a cold beer. “That Nyankichi will eat the leftovers,” he said, “Quite the glutton, that one.”

Nyanko-sensei remained curled into a ball beneath the table, but as Natsume sat down opposite Shigeru he caught the creature’s ears flicking back and forth.

“We really ought to stop letting that cat have his way around here,” Touko said as she flipped the dumplings one-by-one. “Why, he’s going to die of obesity!”

“Taki doesn’t live too far away,” said Natsume, “and she loves gyoza. I could ask her if she’d like the extra food.” Beneath the table, Natsume felt a sharp claw dig into the sole of his left foot. “Ouch! Sensei…”

“Oh, would you?” Touko looked relieved. “That would be marvelous.”

Natsume nodded. “She went hiking with the others, but…” he craned his neck to catch a glimpse of the quickly-darkening sky outside, “...they should be back by now. If I take them over right after we eat, the dumplings should still be hot.”

He shot Taki a quick text message, but when his phone pinged scarcely a minute later, the reply was not what he had expected.

“Everything okay, Takashi-kun?” Touko turned off the stove and opened the overhead cabinets, preparing to set plates out on the table.

Natsume frowned at his phone. “They’re not back yet. They’re still out there.”

At that, Shigeru sat up in surprise. “What, out in the woods, you mean? At this hour?”

The last slivers of sunlight were sinking below the horizon, casting the world in muted shades of purple and dusty blue.

Natsume nodded, his frown deepening. “Taki says they got lost.”

“Oh dear.” Touko put down the stack of plates with a clatter. “That’s really not good. It’s far too late to be out wandering the forest.”

Natsume’s phone pinged again.

“She says they’ll be okay. Kitamoto brought some flashlights.”

“Hm.” Touko bit her lip. “Well, if you say so. I suppose they  _ are _ locals.” She smiled fondly at her husband. “And it’s not as if we didn’t get up to mischief when we were that age.”

“Oh! I just realized,” Shigeru drained the beer in his glass, “I forgot to grab the mail on my way in.”

Natsume stood. “I can get it, it’s not trouble.”

The short saunter through the garden, out to the mailbox, was always a strangely pleasant one - another mundane slice of life that never got any less sweet. The last of the warm-weather cicadas chirped in the bushes, and fireflies had begun to wink in the flowerbeds. Out by the fence, a single horizontal bar of sunset lay over the treetops to the West like a thin layer of molten metal settling and cooling atop the dim landscape. Natsume turned, whistling, newspaper tucked under an arm, and made his way back to the house.

He came inside just in time to hear the horrific crash.

“Touko? Shigeru?” He did not remember sprinting from the genkan down the stout hall - he just knew that suddenly he was in the kitchen, his indoor slippers sliding on the tile.

Shigeru sat frozen where Natsume had left him, still and straight-backed in a way that made the hair on the back of Natsume’s neck stand up. His wife knelt on the floor not three feet away, crawling on her hands and knees. Around her, the chipped shards of what had recently been a ceramic salad bowl lay scattered like sharp confetti.

“T-Touko!”

Natsume was at her side in an instant.

Shigeru remained at the table, his head twisting this way and that, looking around for the source of the confusion.

“Takashi-kun?” She fumbled for Natsume’s hand.

“I’m here, I’m right here, Touko-san.”

She sat back, her legs folded under her, the expression on her face a slack-jawed portrait of pure shock. When he looked into her face, Natsume realized she was not looking back at him - her eyes were glazed-over, clouded like an oracle in some foreign fairytale.

“I can’t see,” she said. “I can’t see.”

The voice of Natsume’s history teacher echoed in his head:  _ To incur the wrath of the yosuzume was to invite terror and bad fortune upon one’s home, family, and land. The worst of all these ill effects was a form of supernatural night blindness, the inability to see in darkness _ .

No.

No.

Natsume’s heart beat in his sternum, in his belly, in his hands.

This was not happening.

This could not be allowed to happen.

“Touko? Darling, where are you?” Shigeru’s hand moved across the surface of the table, feeling for a sign, for an answer. He swung his arm and managed only to send a bowl of fresh rice cascading to the floor. “I can’t see you-- I can’t see anything!”

“Maybe…” Touko sounded dazed, “maybe there’s been a power-out?”

Natsume swallowed. His nerves were on fire. “No,” he said, “the lights...the lights are still on.”

Touko’s grip on his hand was like iron. “You can still see?”

This was not allowed.

This was not allowed.

He would not allow this.

“Yeah.” Natsume heard his own voice as if it was coming from somewhere else, from somewhere outside his body. “I can see just fine.”

_ Think, think! _

“Touko-san, can you stand?”

But Touko’s hands were feeling along the floor, along Natsume’s arm, fumbling at anything within reach. “I can’t see,” she said again. “There’s something wrong with my eyes.”

_ Deep breaths. _

He said it out loud. “Take a deep breath. You’re going to be okay.” The words did not sound so reassuring when his voice shook, but Touko did appear to respond, her head snapping towards the sound of his voice. “Can you stand with me? Come on, we’re going to stand up together so that you can sit down in a proper chair.”

“Yes…” murmured Touko faintly. “That’s a good idea.”

“What in heaven’s name is going on?” said Shigeru, once they were both seated once more at the table.

Natsume tasted blood and realized he’d been biting his tongue.

“You were both struck blind at the exact moment the sun set,” he said, “At least, I think that’s what happened.”

Shigeru’s head swiveled in Natsume’s direction, though their eyes could not connect. “Are you sure that’s what you saw?”

Natsume nodded, then cursed himself for being so stupid. “Yes,” he said aloud. “That’s what I saw.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense,” said Touko. “Takashi-kun, are you sure the lights are still on?”

He tasted blood again.

“I’m sure.”

“This is like something out of the folktales I read in boyhood,” said Shigeru. His face was drawn into a deep frown and his temples shone with nervous sweat, but his voice remained steadfast. “This is fairy story logic.”

_ To incur the wrath of the yosuzume was to invite terror and bad fortune upon one’s home, family, and land. The worst of all these ill effects was a form of supernatural night blindness, the inability to see in darkness. _

“I think,” said Natsume slowly, his voice not his own, “this is my fault.”

At that, Touko’s head bobbed sharply up. “What do you mean?”

He was going to be sick. There were hot tears on his face, but he did not remember shedding them.

“I’m not...like you. Bad things happen when I’m around.” The words were thick in his mouth. His tongue was heavy. “Didn’t you server wonder? Didn’t you ever wonder why no one else wanted me?”

He willed himself to keep going. “I bring bad luck - not on purpose, by accident, but it’s still me that’s doing it.” He drew a breath. “But it’s okay. I’m going to fix this.”

Touko’s hand had found his, somehow.

“You think we didn’t know? We heard the stories, Takashi. We wanted to anyway.”

_ And I bet you’re regretting it now! _ He thought bitterly.

Instead, he said, “I can fix this. I’m going to fix this.”

“Okay,” said Shigeru. He sounded as though he was trying to reassure himself. “Okay.”

Natsume’s phone pinged again. Another text from Taki. But when he opened the message, it was just a string of words in a nonsensical order, with random kanji and the occasional number thrown in as well - sure signs of the autocorrect function at work. In a rush of panic and adrenaline, Natsume realized what must have happened.

“Touko-san?” He had to stop crying, he had to stop  _ now _ . Lives could be on the line and here he was, bawling like a child in his foster mother’s kitchen. “Touko-san, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, but I need to go. I have to.”  _ Stop crying. Stop. Stop _ . “My friends, they’re out in the woods right now and they--” he stole a deep, rattling breath, “I don’t think they can see either.”

“Your friends...you mean Taki Tooru and Kaname-kun?”

Natsume nodded, then realized belatedly that she would not be able to see even that. “Yeah,” he said quietly, “The others, too. Nishimura and Kitamoto.”

Touko reached out. Her hand found his shoulder and Natsume did not even flinch this time.

“This thing that’s happening to us,” she said, “it’s happened to them, too?”

Natsume sucked in a breath. “Yeah. Yeah, probably, I think.”

Suddenly, strong arms wrapped around him, gripping him tight. Natsume was so numb, it took him a moment to realize that Shigeru had swept him up in a crushing embrace.

“I’ll fix it,” said Natsume. His voice bent and broke in his throat. “I promise, I promise I’ll fix it.”

“I know,” said Shigeru. “I know you will.”

_ Stop. Stop crying. You can’t cry, that’s not allowed, it’s on the list _ . But the tears would not stop and Natsume found he did not really care anymore.

“I don’t want to leave,” he said when Shigeru finally let him go. “I don’t want to leave you.”

_ But I have to _ .

He did not say it, and yet somehow felt that the two of them understood.

“You listen here,” said Touko. Her voice shook a little, but her expression was steady and warm. “If you say you need to go and help your friends, I believe you. And if you say you can fix this blindness, I believe you. But I want you to know…” she sniffed and Natsume’s gut twisted at the sound of it, “...that if you come back  _ hurt in any way _ , Takashi-kun, you will be in  _ so much trouble _ .”

“Wh--come  _ back?” _ Natsume’s brain was breaking. He did not understand her. He did not understand this human woman and her human husband and their silly human lives.  _ Come back?! _ Their priorities were incomprehensible to him.

“Ever since I got here…” Natsume stammered, barely able to get the words out, “ever since I arrived, all I’ve done is cause problems.” Flood, famine, blight, blindness. “And you want me to  _ come back _ .”

There was dead silence in the kitchen.

Natsume watched as Shigeru felt for Touko’s hand.

“We’re your family,” he said simply.

Humans. It didn’t make  _ sense _ , nothing made  _ sense _ .

“But families don’t take each other’s sight away!” Natsume’s hands wrung, shook.

“Takashi-kun,” Shigeru said softly, “losing your sight is nothing compared to losing a child.”

Once more, there was silence in the kitchen.

“Run along now, no more lingering.” Touko hugged him once more, lightly this time, and wiped at her sightless eyes. “Shigeru and I are strong, don’t you know? We’ve been through a lot together. We can handle ourselves.”

In lieu of tissue paper, Natsume rubbed his nose on the sleeve of his hoodie.

_ Gross _ , he thought absently, but then again - there was no one around to see it.

“Okay,” he said, voice barely a whisper. “Okay.”

**. . .**

Nyanko-sensei was waiting for him outside on the stoop.

“My word, that was an embarrassing display of sentimentality--AICHHHH!” He squawked when Natsume picked him up by the scruff of his neck.

“Sensei, I need you to do something for me. It’s very important.”

“I’m your bodyguard, remember? You can trust me, blah, blah, blah. Now put me down before I use your entrails for divination and take the Book of Friends for myself. Oy, don’t roll your eyes at me!!”

Natsume did not put him down. “Listen carefully. The Fujiwaras are staying in the house for now, so I think they’ll be okay for the time being - safe, at least. But Tanuma and the others are still out in the woods, completely blind.”

The cat smirked. “So you want me to help you rescue them, yes? What are we waiting for, let’s go--”

“No,” Natsume said. “I’m going to find them myself. Sensei, I need you to make sure  _ nobody else _ is in danger.” When the cat looked askance at him, he went on. “I don’t know how the night blindness works - only that it’s connected to my emotions somehow. I must take a lot of spiritual energy to steal someone’s sight away, so I think it’s probably safe to say that the blindness is only affecting people close to me…”

“But you can’t be sure.”

“Exactly.”

Nyanko shook free of Natsume’s grasp and jumped up onto the garden wall and began to run along the red brick in the direction of the town. Natsume jogged alongside him.

“You go make sure that nobody else out there has been stricken blind!” he called, “I’ll go find the others!”

The cat broke into a run now, morphing fluidly into its enormous, white-whiskered monster form. “As you wish!” it roared.

Natsume took off after it, his wings carrying him into the wooded hills beyond.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> .....so this was a heavy chapter. what did you think of it?
> 
> (my song while writing this one was "Tora" by Humbert Humbert)


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> * mom voice * If Your Homies Walked Off A Cliff, Would You Do It Too?

_Is it scary to fly in the rain?_

It was not long ago that Taki had asked him that question. _Sometimes_ , he’d answered, _if the rain’s coming down hard enough_. He had not been lying.

The task of locating the others was not as easy as it should have been. Humans had a particular smell - an almost metallic stench, so very different from the earthy taste of the trees and the rocks and the clouds and the yokai that lived in them. But the wind was high that night and the clouds, left to gather moisture all day, had grown heavy.

Natsume squinted down into the dense forest, eyes scanning the brush while he did his best to angle away from the onslaught of the wind.

_There!_

His heart leapt - a flashlight’s beam split the night in twain and Natsume dove, unthinking, toward it. 

Sure enough, once he dropped in altitude, he could spy in the distance four figures, ghostly pale against the humming dark of the woods. Wait. _Four?_ Natsume’s stomach dropped for a second before remembering that Sasada had declined the invite as well.

As he drew nearer, he saw that the ray of golden light he’d mistaken for a single flashlight beam was in fact the combined light of all four electric torches held aloft at the same time. He felt an impossible grin pulling at the corners of his mouth, despite his fatigue. The trick with the flashlights had to be Taki’s or Tanuma’s idea. They must have known he’d come looking, and that he’d need some way to find them.

Natsume was overcome with a blinding surge of glee and pride, but it quickly melted into numbing horror when he realized what he was looking at: a cliff face. His friends were so close, so close to a cliff face. The drop-off wasn’t a ninety-degree angle, not exactly, but it was steep and rocky, and he knew no human would survive a fall like that.

He swooped in close to the ground, angling his wings to absorb shock and redirect the upcurrent so as to let him down easy.

“Whoa!” he heard someone (Taki?) cry, buffeted by the gust generated by his landing.

“Natsume, is that you?”

Tanuma.

“I’m here!” His sneakers finding purchase on the firm earth beneath him, he bolted in the direction of the figures. “I’m here, it’s me! Guys?”

He burst through a clearing to find them standing there, hand-in-hand, a little line of phantoms against the backdrop of deep green and cloaking black.

“Natsume!”

Tanuma looked as though he wanted to sprint in the direction of his voice, but the reality of being sightless held him back.

Natsume ran up to them. He was not a hugger - he hadn’t been raised that way - but he hugged them all now, each of them, and then all of them at once.

“Are you okay? I was so scared something would happen!”

Someone’s hand was in his hair. Someone’s head was on his shoulder.

“Well, besides losing all ability to see mysteriously at the same moment?” Kitamoto laughed, but there was an underlying fright, a wariness to it. “Besides that, we’re okay.”

Natsume breathed a sigh of relief.

“Taki’s ankle hurts,” said Tanuma, his hard closed around Natsume’s arm. “I think she tripped and twisted it when the world went dark.”

“I’m fine,” Taki protested, “really.” But Natsume couldn’t help but notice she was putting all her weight on one foot.

“May I see that flashlight please? Thanks.” Natsume leaned down to inspect Taki’s leg. There was blood on her sock from a cut just below the familiar curve of the ankle bone, but it did not look deep.

“Okay.” Breathe, come on, inhale, exhale. “Okay,” he said, “you’re kinda scratched-up, but it doesn’t look serious. If it hurts to walk on, you can lean on my shoulder--”

“Oy, Natsume, is this whole thing some elaborate ruse to get a girl to lean on you?”

 _Good to know Nishimura’s feeling fine_. 

“---but we really need to go home,” he continued, taking Taki by the hand and guiding her to put her weight against his side.

 _Should I tell them about the cliff?_ No, he didn’t want to freak them out more than they already were.

“I’ll guide you guys out, follow me.” He turned, searching for a clear path down the mountainside. “How did you get this far off the trail? Did something happen?”

Kitamoto crossed his arms, breaking the chain. “It was those damn stacks of rock, you know the ones. What do Westerners call them again? Cairns?” This was the first time Natsume had heard him sound so irritated for the first time. “They’re only supposed to be built along the path, but nowadays confused tourists just build them anywhere!”

“ _Nowadays?”_ Nishimura was bringing up the rear, so his voice sounded further off. “What are you, an old person?”

But Kitamoto wasn’t in the mood for his friend’s jibes. “Are you really joking with me at a time like this?” He spread his arms wide now, presumably to indicate the situation, which of course he could not see. “And hey, speaking of confusion - why is Natsume the only one of us whose eyes seem to be working.”

 _Ah_ , said a small voice inside of him, barely a whisper. _Of course_.

There it was.

“Because it’s my fault,” he said, and his voice did not even quiver this time. He was getting good at this. “You can’t see right now because of me.”

Kitamoto took a step backwards.

“It’s because I cause bad luck.”

Kitamoto took another step backwards. “That’s BS, Natsume Takashi! What’s really going on with you?” Some part of Natsume’s brain registered that he sounded upset, but not in the way people were usually upset with Natsume - there was no wrath here, no fear, no hatred. Just...something else.

“You really don’t trust us, do you?” Kitamoto’s voice was pitched higher than it usually was. He was backing away again and Natsume let go of Taki, surging forward.

“No, stop,” he said, “Stop moving--”

“You say it’s all your fault but you won’t even give us a chance to deny it _because we don’t know what’s going on with you_.”

“Because I don’t want to hurt you!” Natsume pleaded. “I can’t, not more than I already have!”

Kitamoto really did look furious now. “And you think worry doesn’t hurt? You think concern doesn’t hurt?” His voice broke for real now. “We _care_ about you! Don’t you see, that’s why it’s all worth it! Friends are worth getting hurt for sometimes! Don’t you see that’s how people survive?”

Natsume blinked.

Time stopped as Kitamoto’s foot slipped into empty air and he tumbled backwards off the cliff. Natsume’s body moved before he had a chance to think and he was falling suddenly, his wings wrapped tight around his friend.

**. . .**

"That was one hell of a speech you gave back there,” teased Nishimura. “Man, Atsushi, who knew you were such a sensitive guy? I’m sure you’ll ace that stupid poetry project.”

The four of them sat in a ring with Natsume at its center as he gasped for air. He’d never borne the weight of a human - someone his equal in body mass - and his muscles ached from the strain. By his side, Kitamoto lay on his back in the grass, contemplating what was likely the nearest he’d even come to death.

“Not funny,” he groaned, but even he joined in the chorus of exhausted, anxious giggling. When the laughter had died down he simply lay there, staring up into the night sky. “The stars sure are pretty…”

Suddenly, he sat up again, his body jerking so abruptly that for a moment Natsume wondered if he was having a seizure.

“Stars. Stars, I can see the stars!” Kitamoto was on his feet. “I CAN SEE!”

Tanuma held up a hand in front of his face. “Me too!”

“And me!” cried Taki.

All heads turned to Nishimura expectantly, but he was busy squinting at Natsume through the gloom.

“Is it just me, or does the transfer student have wings?”

“No,” Kitamoto said, “you’re right, those are wings for sure.”

It had all happened so fast, Natsume had no time to react - no time, even, to feel his usual pang of fear at being discovered. His friends were alive. He couldn’t summon the energy to care about anything else.

“Hey.” Kitamoto nudged at Nishimura with the toe of his hiking boots. “Pay up.”

The other watched, astounded, as Nishimura took out his wallet and slipped the other boy what looked like a slim wad of bank notes.

“No way,” said Taki.

“Did you…” stuttered Tanuma.

“Oh my god,” said Natsume. “You placed bets.”

Kitamoto pocketed the cash, looking smug all the while. “On what your tragic, mysterious backstory turned out to be? Yeah, we did.”

Taki doubled over in a fit, clutching her stomach.

“Hey, don’t look at me like that! It was Satoru’s idea!”

“I bet that you were the illegitimate son of some big city mob boss,” said Nishimura glumly, “relocated to the countryside as part of a witness protection program. Atsushi here bet on supernatural causes.”

“Let’s go home,” said Kitamoto, extending a hand to help Natsume up off the damp grass. “I think Nanatsuji is still open. Cakes are on me this time.”

**THE END**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (my song for this chapter was "Onaji hanashi" by Humbert Humbert and it's THEIR BEST TRACK!!! sorry but i'm gonna be yelling about this band forever. idk what they're singing about but whatever it is, it slaps)


	7. epilogue

The skies cleared the following day, and the rain clouds did not return. The flooding ended, and the crops no longer sickened and died in the fields.

A week passed, then two, and then another after that, and Natsume began to wonder if this was what life looked like now: a familiar shape that fit in the palm of his hand.

Outside, the first flecks of frost tinted the air, portents of oncoming winter. Touko was making spiced jam again. Shigeru would be home soon, to kiss on her forehead right her between the eyes and ask Natsume about his homework.

Nishimura lent him comic books and borrowed study guides; he used a feather as a bookmark now - it was glossy and brown and straight like an arrow, shot through with streaks of silver. Kitamoto had been roped into joining the baseball team, which meant that Tanuma and Natsume were under constant pressure to do so as well. _You’ll really like it_ , Kitamoto kept telling them, _it’s really satisfying to feel the bat connect with the ball!_

Taki was in favor of the idea. Ball games were only fun to watch if you knew the players, she insisted, and she wanted an excuse to go and eat popcorn and deep-fried snack foods.

It was real and not-real. It was safe and also not. _Safe as living, safe as life_.

Human existence was just like that, Natsume was beginning to realize. Human day and human nights, human autumns and human springs: gone quickly, but that was alright - they would repeat themselves like a ticking clock, over and over again. Tomorrow would be like today, which wouldn’t be too different than the day after that, or the day before.

Natsume had even managed to finish his poetry assignment just in time for presentation day.

  
  


**家族 / “FAMILY”**

There’s a bird outside your window

It’s waiting for you to let it in

I’m there, too.

But I am not waiting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope you enjoyed this! please let me know your thoughts below - even if they aren't necessarily positive. i really value constructive criticism!
> 
> if you're interested in seeing more of my stuff, i have an [art tumblr](https://swordfright.tumblr.com/) where i post my drawings. i'm a longtime traditional artist who only recently picked up digital art, so i'm still in the process of transferring my skillset. I've also got some [natsume yuujinchou merch](https://www.etsy.com/shop/swordfright) over on etsy, if that sort of thing interests you.
> 
> oh, i almost forgot - the song for this final chapter is Humbert Humbert's cover of "Chiisana Koi no Uta" which is very difficult to find on YouTube but is conveniently on spotify!


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